


if we don't dare to hold it

by impossibletruths



Series: vigilance; victory; sacrifice [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Developing Relationship, F/M, Feelings Realization, Late Night Conversations, Morrigan's ritual, Multi, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 15:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: It’s unpleasant, you know–– discovering what it is to want something when you cannot have it; knowing you have missed a chance that will not come again; learning selfishness too late. There is no time for that now.It does not hurt any less.(Or, the Warden deals with Morrigan’s proposition.)





	if we don't dare to hold it

**Author's Note:**

> title from archers by ballroom thieves. originally posted to [tumblr](https://cityandking.tumblr.com/post/170246675587)

It is late when she knocks on Alistair’s door, trembling hands clenched tight at her sides. She forces herself to lower her shoulders, to unclench her jaw, to school her face to customary blankness before he opens the door, too-fast and just this side of frantic. Energy bleeds off him, fingers tapping against the dark wood and weight shifting as though readying for a fight. His worry helps with hers not in the slightest.

“Ah!” he says, too loud. “Hello! What a surprise!”

“Alistair,” she says, quiet and even and grateful for that modicum of control. “May I come in?”

“Oh, um. Yes, of course.”

He steps aside to allow her entry, and she takes three quick steps into the near-bare room. She considers sitting on the bed, but it would be better to stand for this, she thinks. He leans back against the door in a transparent attempt to seem at ease. She unclenches her fists.

The words are surprisingly difficult to muster. She presses her lips together. He clears his throat.

“Did you, ah. Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

“Yes,” she says, clipped, and he stares, brow furrowed in a slow shift towards concern. It is misplaced. “It–– I have a request.”

“Of me?”

“Yes.”

“What more could I possibly do?”

She flinches at that in spite of herself, and regret flashes across his face as soon as the words are out, but they are already there in the open, between them. She hesitates a moment, then crosses to the bed and sits. 

She was wrong. Nothing will make this better at all. She may as well be comfortable.

“What if,” she starts, steady, and he watches her with those too-sharp eyes. He is not nearly so stupid as people like to believe. “What if I told you there was a way to survive slaying the Archdemon?”

He narrows his eyes at her. “Wouldn’t someone have figured it out by now?”

“It’s…” She sighs. “I don’t think it is the sort of solution people would look to.”

“Ooh, that sounds ominous. What is it, a gross potion? Ritual sacrifice? Blood magic?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t–– What?”

“Morrigan knows of a ritual, some kind of ancient magic.”

He scoffs, pushing himself away from the door to pace a few short, aborted steps. “Blood magic. Ha. Yes, that does sound like Morrigan.”

“It could save your life.”  _It could save mine_ , she does not say, still dizzy with the thought of it, of an afterward.

She has been so resigned to death. This new possibility courses electric through her. She does not know what to do with such hope.

“How?” he asks, turning to her. “What does she want?”

“You to get her with child.”

She could soften this news, but the bluntness is almost worth it for the way he utterly freezes. Any other time, it might even be funny.

“I–– What?”

“A child with the taint will draw the Archdemon’s spirit and render it benign––as much as an Old God’s soul might be consider benign––so that it will kill neither you nor me.”

“A child.”

“Yes.”

“She wants––”

“Yes.”

“I––  _why_?”

“I rather lack the necessary parts for it,” Lira replies wryly, and Alistair levels a scowl at her, then slumps on the bed.

“And you… want me to?”

She turns slightly to look at him, feet planted on the floor and head tipped down to stare at his own hands open in his lap. It is selfish to ask this of him.

She has not been selfish in a long while now.

“I… have thought it over a great deal,” she admits. “I did not think you would be willing.”

“Yes, well. I can’t really say I am.”

She presses her lips together as her stomach sinks, vertigo-nausea swirling in the space it leaves. No. Of course not. She should not have allowed herself hope.

“Of course,” she says, small, and it is so  _stupid_  but for a moment she wants to be sick, or cry, or both. But there is no time for that now. She scrapes the shreds of her resolve together. “Thank you for hearing me out, Alistair.”

She stands to go.

“Lira, wait.”

She pauses. “Yes?”

“I–– come back. Come on, sit down. I’m sure you can convince me. Give it your best shot. You’re always so good at it.”

She doesn’t turn back to him. “I’d rather not force you.”

“But you still wish I would do it.”

She closes her eyes and turns back to him before opening them. He sits on the edge of the bed, bare feet planted on the cold stone floor, his hands in his lap. He looks young in his worn cotton shirt, hair a bit of a mess and breeches slightly too short. He looks vulnerable too, and soft, and for a single, swelling moment she wishes she were the one inviting him to bed, not Morrigan. But she’s not. She can’t. He would cut himself to pieces on her sharp edges without a second thought, and she won’t let him. She has done enough to him already.

But she can give him the truth. She can do that for him, at least.

“Yes,” she admits, brittle and tired and, beneath it all, afraid. She hates it, the sour taste in her mouth and the trembling of her hands and the weakness of her spirit. She should be better than this. “Yes. I want to live.”

He pats the spot on the bed next to him in invitation. She sits.

Now she is the ones staring down at her lap, soft-soled boots scuffing quietly against the floor. He sits next to her, warm and solid, and she forces herself not to tug at the hem of her shirt, or lean against him, or lie. She breathes in deep.

“I’ve asked so much of you already,” she says. “It’s not fair to ask this too.”

He is quiet for a long moment, so long she worries. He is not a quiet man; he wields his words as their own sort of shield, something between him and the world, but he is quiet now. She looks to him to find him staring at her. He smiles when he catches her eye, a little wan but honest.

“This… child,” he says, stumbling over the word. “It’ll be a bastard.”

“Yes.”

“It’s just–– I know what that’s like. I don’t want a child of mine to grow up like I did.”

Maker damn it all, he is far too good a man for this. She swallows.

“Morrigan intends to raise them as her own.”

“That’s a terrifying thought.”

She supposes that to be true. She also thinks the woman might surprise them. More than anything, she thinks it should not be her business, despite her concern.

“You are… not to see them,” she adds when they have both been silent too long.

"No, of course not.” He looks not a bit surprised. “And… you’re sure it will work?”

“She is.”

It’s not the question he asked, but he accepts the answer with a wry tilt of his lips. She stares at him a long moment, then looks away. Her fingers pick at the bedspread.

He says, “Alright.”

She stills. “What?”

“Alright. I’ll do it.” He stands, and shudders. “Though–– only for you.”

She stares up at him and waits for the hot-burning hope to return. Instead, she only feels hollow.

“Truly?”

“Yes. Though, we had best go now, before I change my mind.”

She stands without thinking, feet moving of their own volition, and Alistair trails her the whole way to Morrigan’s room. She knocks on Morrigan’s door, desperately dragging herself together. Morrigan answers almost imediately, wary gaze shifting to an expression Lira cannot read when she catches sight of Alistair over her shoulder.

“So you managed to convince him after all.”

“Yes,” says Lira distantly. “He agreed.”

He clears his throat. “Though, I’m starting to wish this were all a dream.”

Morrigan’s smile takes on an edge.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she says, opening the door wider. “I’m sure you shall enjoy this a great deal more than you expect.”

Lira swears she hears him gulp.

“Ah,” he says. “Right.”

She is, she realizes, in the way. She steps aside, so that Alistair may enter the room. He glances back at her as he goes, and she nods to him, once. Morrigan does not miss the exchange.

“T’will work,” she promises. “No harm shall come to him, nor you. I swear it.”

“I know,” says Lira, and when Morrigan closes the door she stands there a moment, uncertain what to do with herself.

She settles on her own room, but it is a bad choice. The walls here are not so thin as the cloth of their tents, but they are not thick enough to muffle the noise from the room next door. Try as she might, she cannot blot the sound out, and a fresh, unearned jealousy churns in her gut.

Eventually, though, they fall quiet, ritual completed, and still she cannot sleep. She gives up on it, wraps her blanket around herself and leaves her too-big and borrowed room to sit on the stairs instead. The keep is near-silent in these small hours of the morning, the last of the preparations made and soldiers and lords alike taking this last evening to make themselves ready for the morrow’s battle.

Alistair does not emerge from Morrigan’s room. Lira rests her head against the cold stone wall of the curving stairwell and closes her eyes.

Sleep, eventually, claims her. Her dreams brim with visions of fire and death, and the Archdemon reigns above it all, beckoning her ever closer. She swears she can almost understand its roars, and she sleeps fitfully, caught just at the lip of the abyss, preparing for the plunge.

It is Zevran who finds her in the morning. He nearly trips over her on his way downstairs, and in the hazy moment between sleep and waking she reaches for a blade she doesn’t have, because she is not in her room but slumped against the wall upon the stairs. She blinks the sleep out of her eyes.

“My friend?” says Zevran, standing over her. “What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she replies, trying to regain her bearings. The stairs are cold and uncomfortable beneath her.

“Is everything alright?”

“I––” She pulls up the edges of her blanket and pushes her hair out of her face. The world slowly filters back in, too early for the castle to be awake but late enough to be morning. She blinks the sleep from her eyes.

Zev crouches next to her. “Lira?”

“I’m fine,” she says, shaking her head, and the night rushes back to her, all the heartache and guilt and jealousy and the hope above it all, overwhelming and too big and too impossible, and she presses her hands to her mouth, as though she could hold it all in. Zevran’s brow furrows.

“Lira?” he repeats. “What is wrong?”

“Nothing,” she says, and she is horrified to hear her voice crack around the word. Tears well in her eyes. “Nothing, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

His face goes impossibly soft, and one arm wraps around her, and she turns into his shoulder without thinking, sobs muffled in the soft fabric of his shirt. “Oh, my friend,” he says, his other hand rubbing her back. He does not even know, thinks a faraway part of her. He has no idea what she has done, what she has made her friends do in the name of her own scrabbling selfishness. “It is alright. It will be alright.”

She clutches her blanket tighter around her and tries to believe it.

She cries until she feels hollow, and then wipes her face, and apologizes for the mess she has made of his shirt. He shrugs.

“There has been much worse on it, trust me,” he tells her. She picks up the pieces of herself and settles her shoulders.

“I did not mean to interrupt your morning.”

“It is no worry, my friend. Though you should be glad I was the first one awake, and not Oghren.”

She laughs at that, and rolls out the stiffness in her neck. There is much to do. She has wasted too long feeling sorry for herself, too long thinking of things that have no future and no past. She is better than that. She has to be.

“I’m sorry,” she says with a sigh. He presses a quick kiss to her temple.

“There is nothing to be sorry for. And, do not worry. I will tell no one that the great and powerful Warden is only human after all. It will be our secret.”

“Thank you, Zev.”

“You are welcome.”

She watches him clatter downstairs, then gathers her blanket and returns to her room, washes her face and slips on her piecemeal armor, and by the time she buckles her last dagger to her forearm she feels herself again, ivory-masked Warden of Ferelden, damned and praised in equal measure and perhaps the last hope this world has of surviving the Blight.

And then, afterward–– well, she does not know what tomorrow’s sunrise will bring. But it is there, golden and waiting, and she will not let it slip away. Not now.

No fucking way.


End file.
